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Q&A with Hendrik Bourgeois, vice president for European affairs and general counsel at GE

Is European regulation helping or hindering innovation in the field of big data and the Internet of Things? Ideas Factory sat down with Hendrik Bourgeois, vice president (VP) for European affairs and general counsel at GE, to find out.

Ideas Factory: As VP for European affairs you have a lot of experience navigating the world of EU regulation. What would you say is most urgently needed from European lawmakers to digitally transform Europe’s industrial and commercial activity?

Bourgeois: Generally, European lawmakers are working in the right areas and have appropriate objectives, particularly on industrial and commercial. The Commission is for instance working on an initiative to ensure free flow of data. You can’t have a digital revolution if you still have barriers to data flow. Business today is global.

But Europe could do more in terms of encouraging pilot projects, bringing scientists together with big companies, SMEs, start-ups and universities to showcase the right environment for digital industry.

Ideas Factory: People have some anxiety about digital transitions resulting in job losses. Are job losses inevitable in this transition?

Bourgeois: I don’t buy the notion that because of the digitalization of industry we’re going to lose jobs. I think jobs will be transformed and displaced, but I don’t think that necessarily means jobs will be lost. You’ll see new jobs, which create new professional experiences that will enable us humans to work better, with better technologies to increase skills.

Ideas Factory: Industry? What safeguards should be put in place to ensure that these digital transitions don’t increase unemployment?

Bourgeois: I think there is a role for government here, but not in the sense of protecting a job at any costs. The government can create flexible and dynamic labor markets that can minimize any disruption. We have robust social safety nets here in Europe, but it shouldn’t only be ‘here’s a check’. It should be about retraining, making sure people are getting education and vocational training and apprenticeship programs that will enable the work force to integrate this new world of digital.

Ideas Factory: Will the digital transformation make industrial processes safer, or more dangerous, for people working in these sectors?

Bourgeois: In our factories, we’ve already seen that when we adopt digital technologies and digital tools on our factory floors it creates a safer environment. Work accidents have been sharply reduced with the use of these new technologies. They’re less prone to human error. It makes it, from an industrial process perspective, certainly safer.

Ideas Factory: GE is a very large digital industrial company, and it’s now being called be some a “120-year-old startup”. What kind of advantages does that longevity bring when entering some of these new digital spaces?

Bourgeois: It’s not really longevity, but it is our deep domain expertise in industrial engineering. That is what gives GE a specific advantage in this space, because we really know how these things work — that’s what gives us a competitive edge. That allows us to enter this new digital space with a different value proposition for our customers.